Talk:Isaiah Mustafa

Statistics

Anyone have his Arizona State college stats? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.96.4.75 (talk) 19:37, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

Former NFL receiver

So as much as we all love this guy, is there any evidence he actually played in an NFL game? I think it's a bit misleading to call him a former NFL wide receiver if he never actually set foot in a real game. One citation is to a commercial and the other is simply to a list of people released by a team.--Crossmr (talk) 16:51, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

When I filled out the article with the cites that indicated that Mustafa had never made an NFL active roster, I wondered that myself. There have been lengthy debates in the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League archives, with no firm consensus. The safest thing is to keep things as the article currently stands.

(For the record, my opinion on the issue is that the status quo is the correct one. Being on a practice squad isn't the same thing as a minor league player who never makes the majors. As members of the scout team, practice squad players play against the active roster and help its members prepare for each game in a way minor-league players don't.)

On an unrelated note, a change that should be made is to switch to Template:Infobox NFLactive as explained there. YLee (talk) 19:02, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

The safest thing would be to write it correctly. If there is no evidence he was actually on the active roster, I think it's violation of WP:NPOV to call him a former receiver for the NFL. It's extremely unlikely that any other player who was simply on the practice squad would ever be notable, so writing it here would give the impression that he was more than he really was. Any other time we'd read that information here it would indicate to us that the individual actually played in games. Why would we change to an active template? Is he active? Why are we even using the NFL template for this guy at all? The guy isn't famous at all for playing football. he never actually played pro. I think there are some serious issues with this article trying to create a point of view that doesn't exist and that isn't supported by the citations. None of the citations support claiming that he's a former NFL wide receiver either, as such I'm tagging it.--Crossmr (talk) 00:10, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

As the NFLactive template documentation explains, it is to be used instead of the obsolete NFLretired template (which this article currently uses) in all cases. I have no objections to rewriting the lead to say that he was on NFL teams' practice squads, and will do so. YLee (talk) 00:35, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Okay, that's a better approach. This way there is no misrepresentation. What about using the NFL infoboox as his main infobox? He didn't actually play pro, and it isn't what he's famous for. I just get the impression that there is way too much focus on the NFL career he never had here.--Crossmr (talk) 06:05, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

As discussed in the talk pages I mention above, how to handle practice squad players' infoboxes has been something that's been discussed before with no consensus as far as I can see, so the safest thing to do is to stick with the status quo. I don't see undue discussion of Mustafa's football career in the article; the body properly mentions his practice squad/training camp role, and as Mustafa's acting career continues discussion of that will naturally grow over time. PS - This discussion is not inherently a POV/NPOV issue, so the tag should be removed. YLee (talk) 06:43, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Sure it is, if we're portraying the football career as something more than it is, it creates a point of view. let's look at another example of Michael Jordan. he played ball, arguably to the same level that mustafa played football, the guy even had a card in the baseball sets at the time. yet he has no baseball infobox, not even as a supplementary info box.--Crossmr (talk) 09:22, 30 September 2010 (UTC)